It may sound like a tricky question but the truth is, it’s not hard to figure out which new gTLDs will make it and which won’t.
First of all, there are two important things you should start with:
1) the actual extension
2) the company behind it
Think about it: a bad extension like .coolwebsite (too long, too confusing) can have the best company in the world behind it and would still fail. But the same way, a good extension can also fail if the company in question will be clueless.
That brings us right back to the two important ingredients I mentioned: an extension that genuinely has potential and a company that knows what it’s doing.
Identifying the winning combinations won’t exactly be rocket science, you just have to ask yourself one important question:
Is the gTLD in question “all over the place”, in other words is it marketed properly like dot co was, for example?
And by “all over the place”, I really do mean “all over the place”: if you see it advertised on pretty much all important domaining blogs/forums/websites and if you see it advertised on non-domaining websites as well, then that’s definitely a good start.
I said it countless times: as the owner of DomainingTips.com, I’m looking forward to the additional advertising revenue. I’d be the world’s biggest hypocrite to say otherwise. Let’s be honest though: compared to other industries, advertising on pretty much all popular domaining websites isn’t all that expensive.
In fact, I’m reasonably confident you can book an advertising spot on *all* important blogs + forums at a *combined* cost that’s barely in the 6 fig zone. And by doing that, you’d literally be all over the place like dot co was and we can all agree that their results were impressive to say the least.
When it comes to sites that aren’t domaining-related, the sky is the limit when it comes to ad budgets but as a rule of thumb, if a new gTLD wants to be taken seriously and stand out (make no mistake, there will be a lot of competition), it has to do two things:
1) be all over the place in terms of domaining blogs/forums/websites
2) be highly visible on websites that aren’t necessarily related to domains we well
So if you see one of the new gTLDs heavily advertised on domaining sites and also see it mentioned on large non-domaining websites regularly then yes, that new gTLD will stand a chance.
It takes money to make money.
A few important players will probably make insane amounts of money and the smaller players will be eliminated.
In essence, I’d say those who were barely able to raise enough money to pay the initial fees will unfortunately fail. Those who can afford a proper marketing campaign will do well, there’s no room for small fish when it comes to new gTLDs.
Therefore, figuring out which new gTLDs will succeed and which won’t isn’t exactly rocket science.
Follow them closely, analyze their presence on domaining sites as well as non-domaining outlets and you like what you see, the gTLD in question will probably do well.
November 16th, 2013 at 3:47 pm
Easy question – all will fail.
November 16th, 2013 at 4:12 pm
@Robbie: some people are bullish on new gTLDs, some are bearish. I respect both perspectives but let’s not forget the dot co example I referred to in this post.
I’m sure you will agree with me that dot co did very well, their aggressive marketing campaigns definitely paid off. I think we’ll see something similar with the new gTLDs.
Those who can afford an aggressive marketing campaign similar to the dot co one will make lots of money, those who can’t will fail.
November 16th, 2013 at 5:06 pm
Andrei – The only ‘play’ here is for (a couple of) the registrars, themselves. They’re going to pull from the razor-and-blades playbook, but hooking people with free registrations, then upselling registrants with email, site-templates, and a few other ‘extras.’
Of course, come years 2, 3, etc…the percentage of drops is going to be staggering – exactly what happens to most of the other Freemium-model services out there.
There will be almost ZERO dollars made in the secondary market, but when the smoke starts to clear in 12-18 months I predict that keyword dot-coms will rise five-fold in price.
The players in this space are simply crunching the numbers, have figured out their break-even points (coming from the upsell offerings), and plan to hang in there for 24-36 months: And thereafter will just package the businesses they’ve built and sell to a firm like GoDaddy, which may buy them just to reduce the competitive ‘noise.’
All I can say is that the massive amounts of confusion that will be created by these gTLD rollouts are making me seriously consider going back to practice TM law. But I digress…
November 16th, 2013 at 5:20 pm
.Co got much of its demand from those who wanted to secure their brand from squatters and also from those who wanted to siphon visitors from existing high traffic .com sites. Kevin Ham made this cctld squatting concept famous.
.Crapolla, however, offers nothing to either the domainer, the web owner or to the end user. The gtld’s will be going down.
November 16th, 2013 at 8:21 pm
I dont care what company is behind it the gtlds are a atupid idea and all of them will fail like .travel
November 17th, 2013 at 5:05 am
> then upselling registrants with email, site-templates, and a few other ‘extras.’
Or will one or two manage to press home their advantage rather more comprehensively than that.
They’ll stimulate innovation alright among those who get the tld, but might those who don’t occasionally wonder whether it’s worth bothering developing a particular service, if the tld registry operator will be in a much stronger position to offer the same.
November 17th, 2013 at 5:49 am
Although in fairness opening up new namespaces will of course create possibilities for registrants as well as registries. It just seems somewhat unsatisfactory that for-profit organisations are the kingmakers.